For the past few weeks I’ve been going through some pretty big post ironman blues. I couldn’t be arsed training but at the same time I’ve been beating myself up for not training. Not enough beating up to actually get me doing anything, which just made it worse.
All of a sudden last Sunday I stumbled across what I needed to do; make a plan, get organised, remove my excuses and set some goals. None of this is revolutionary, in fact I blogged about it last week!
So on Sunday night I resolved to get organised and run to work on Tuesday and Friday. The run-commute takes a bit of planning but it really acts as a motivation to actually do it. I only ran 40 minutes or so and boy was it tough. The problem with doing the Ironman is that now when I have a bad run I think, bloody hell Neil you’ve done an ironman, this should be easy. I know it’s obvious that having 5 or 6 weeks off serious running it would be tough getting back into it. I know that, but still it’s hard to stop thinking you should be a lot faster/smoother/better than I am right now.
I’ve set some goals too. I want to get fast. Over the next year I want to:
Sub 20 for a 5km
Sub 40 for a 10km
Sub 1:30 for a half marathon
Sub 3:30 for a marathon
The first one I don’t think I’m that far from doing now, the others I’m miles off. It’s going to be a stretch getting there.
I was so pleased with stating running again I decided to run up to heaton park for the park run on Saturday. It’s only about 6 miles but it felt great to actually feel motivated enough to get up and go. I’ve also made a plan to get stronger and more flexible so I went to my first ever yoga class with Pilla on Wednesday which I loved. I’ve also been doing a couple of circuit routines as part of project Pilla, and that is seriously tough. It’s 10 different high intensity exercises each lasting a minute, which you have 15 seconds between. After doing all 10 you have a 2 minute break before repeating the whole thing two more times. I love this sort of stuff – bit like running you need very little kit, and it’s great value time wise. We did one tonight and I was on the floor by the end!
The next problem with ironman training is that despite the fact that I’ve done two circuits, 4 runs, yoga, a stretching dvd and cycled to the allotment I still feel like I’m not doing enough! I feel like I’m not training hard because I’m not falling asleep every time I sit down. I don’t know why I’m beating myself up about that because it’s unsustainable for me to be like that, but that’s just the way I am now.